Triumph and Grief
by Hopedruid
Summary: Kira felt triumph over the death of his most formidable foe. Light had...other feelings.


The day L died, Light returned home in a fog. Kira had been victorious, Kira had won and L's limp lifeless body had lain at his feet. L died in his arms, so Kira was able to savor the look of defeat in his eyes. Kira hated that L had looked surprised but not shocked, he had foreseen the possibility that he would die very soon. Damn L, Kira thought, he denied me the final victory that I richly deserved. The Greatest Detective in the world not seeing his death coming. Kira was glad, he hated L, and couldn't wait to see his unmarked tombstone.

Light and Kira didn't always agree on everything.

Light gave a couple mumbled excuses to his mother and sister and fled to his room. This was a major event in his life and he had to process his feelings alone. First, What were they? Light looked down at his wrist, scarred from where he was handcuffed for many months. Grief. Loss. Nostalgia. Regret. Something indescribable that Light had never felt before. He had the absurd notion that he would trade anything to be shackled to the young detective again. Over the months, spent in an amnesiac state, pursuing Kira with L he had grown an affection for even the most annoying of the eccentric genius' habits.

Light could no longer turn to talk to him, hear the sound of his voice as he prattled on about some ridiculous and probably accurate theory of his, see the look on his face when he felt he was getting closer or gained new resolve. Even L's constant accusations and mind games were something he had grown used to. He was another mind similar in intelligence to his own and who had been a constant presence in his life for about a year,both before and after they had met face to face.

And now he was just gone.

Light knew that love was just chemicals. That it was only natural for him to feel something for someone who shared his interests and with whom he had spent a great deal of time. Especially since, for all his paranoia and mind games, L had been kind to him.

However Light was Kira, and L was an enemy and threat to Kira's new world and had to be destroyed.

In a simple world that would be enough. Light would kill all the criminals and through a baptism of blood and fire a new world would be reborn. One innocent and pure. No sin would ever be committed again and everyone would be happy forever.

But it wasn't a simple world was it? It was a complicated one full of apple loving shinigami, and bottle blonde models that are smarter than they first appear, and disheveled shut in detectives, and popular, handsome honor students who commit mass murder. The world was messy and confusing and that had been L's message all along. That was what he was trying to tell him on the rooftop.

Light had wanted to know if the man he had been shackled to had been L-Kira's enemy and a symbol of the corrupt old world, Ryuzaki-The brave detective that he had admired and worked alongside, or Ryouga-the eccentric classmate that had tried to befriend him. It had taken him that man's death to realize he had been all of those things and more, hidden images of men he had been, could be and was in other environments.

In Lights world there had only been cops and criminals, light and dark, beautiful and ugly, black and white, perfect and monstrous, good and evil, Kira and L. Now he could see more into the hazy, grey areas that L had lived in all his life. L had straddled all those lines and he had done it with easy confidence and a pinch of self-deprecation. L was not good. L was not bad. L was L.

It didn't matter now though. L had died and it was because of him. Light had the blood of countless people on his hands and he had just added the only person that had ever really known him to that list. Light had broken himself in his mad quest to be perfect and had spawned the loathsome entity called Kira. Kira, the Notebook, and Light's good intentions to save the world and himself from damnation had resulted in the most horrifying crime of all time.

Light looked in the mirror and he couldn't see himself anymore. Just Kira, with that awful smirk and insufferable arrogance, and those red eyes. There was no redemption possible for him. Not anymore.

"Ok, Kira. Do your worst. If I can't be God, then I shall be a tyrant, because I just don't have the strength to fight anymore." Light said.

As Light faded into the deep recesses of his own mind, Kira smirked. "Now there is nothing in my way." He said and pulled out the notebook. He caressed it gently, with a strange hunger in his eyes.


End file.
